Abstract

The article examines how party-state governed street vendors in 1950’s Shanghai. Street vendor[tanfan], usually refers to independent merchants on streets and neighborhoods, was one of the huge unorganized and uncontrolled group with a long history. In Republican period, Shanghai Police had tried to keep a lid on street vendors but it failed confronting with strong opposition among vendors and citizens. Previous studies on Shanghai street vendors pointed that close and inter dependent relationship between citizens and vendors was the primary reason of this failed governance. And it also attributed successive governance of street vendor after 1949 to the Shanghai party-state’s assault on this relationship by individualization and thorough control of citizens. However, other than connection with citizens, street vendors had several characteristics to challenge the regime and party-state of Shanghai targeted at these. Shanghai Municipal Government recommended cooperative of street vendors in the context of denying small private economy and pursuing convenience of management. Although cooperative hurts street vendor’s interests, street vendors surrendered and be integrated. To overcome vendor’s mobility and disgregation, government organized them as street vendors committee[tanfan weiyuanhui] based on their business place and government affairs. The most differentiated policy was “Education of Patriotism and Law Abiding” against street vendors. During the mass movement, party-state encouraged street vendors to accuse each other’s illegal acts. And it not only insulted disloyal street vendors but also forgave and promoted surrenderer in public. The procedure is usually taken against counter-revolutionaries, bad element, or corrupted cadres. It means that Chinese Communist Party regard street vendors as enemy of regime despite of petty scale of their business, which was almost no difference with laborer. This characterized the governance of street vendors by Chinese Party-state in 1950’s.

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